


of all the ways to hurt me, hurting yourself is the worst

by toomuchsky



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 21:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18677776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchsky/pseuds/toomuchsky
Summary: a study in klaus hargreeves & vulnerability, as told by ben hargreeves.





	of all the ways to hurt me, hurting yourself is the worst

Klaus Hargreeves isn’t someone who likes talking about his feelings. Ben knows this - has always known this, even back when he was alive. Klaus was always shifting the conversation just so, making jabs and insults at other people, being loud and obnoxious just to take the focus off of what he was really feeling, or just - lying. Lying and lying and lying to everyone, whenever he could, just to avoid having to face their judgment - or himself.

Ben had tried (or at least he tells himself he’d tried) to get the truth out of him many, many times, but Klaus never let up his dramatics, and eventually, somewhere down the line, without realizing, he’d given up on trying.

It doesn’t become apparent _how_ bad he was at facing himself until Ben dies and suddenly, Klaus is the only person who can see him.

Klaus tries to tell the others about Ben - just once, and when they don’t believe him, caught up in their own grief and trauma and annoyance that Klaus would use their brother’s death as an excuse for attention, he laughs for so hard and for so long (high on pills and heroin and maybe something else) that he chokes on it, and doesn’t bother trying again.

The point is, Ben can count on his fingers the number of times he’d seen his brother vulnerable.

 

The first time is a couple of years after Klaus had left home - he’s nineteen now, and Ben is perpetually, infinitely, stuck at sixteen, and he tries (so so hard) not to resent Klaus for having those three extra years and _wasting_ them.

He’s currently gasping for air on the stretcher of an ambulance, eyes fluttering - open closed open closed - and fingers twitching, the needle that had caused him to OD still stuck in his arm until the paramedics remove it. “Ben,” he rasps. “Ben.”

“I’m here,” Ben says, voice wet with tears and panic. It never gets easier, no matter how often he thinks it might (and hopes it doesn’t, because what would that mean for them, for _Klaus_ , if it ever got easier to see him like this). “I’m here I’m here I’m here - don’t leave me, Klaus. You hear me? You are _not allowed to leave me_ .” _What would happen to him if Klaus died_?

Klaus relaxes for a second, and then tenses again as he must notice the ghost in the corner. “Hate hospitals, Ben. Hate ambulances,” he slurs, mumbling.

The paramedics must hear him, talking to nothing, talking to air, but even at nineteen and only three years out of the Academy, Klaus’ eccentricities are well known among the city’s EMS staff. And even if they weren’t, they’d write him off as another high junkie talking to himself.

“I know, Klaus, I know,” Ben comforts. “But you gotta - you gotta. You could die, Klaus, and I can’t - I can’t lose you.”

“Hate ‘em, Ben,” Klaus is close to sobbing now. “They’re so _loud_ , so so loud.” The woman in the corner has finally realized Klaus can see her, starts wailing and howling and yelling. The little boy with an eye missing is quiet, but starts hovering just over Klaus’ body, staring at his face. Klaus flinches away, heart rate monitor rising so much that the paramedics descend on him again. “Why can’t they just _leave me alone_ ?” he’s screaming now, thrashing, sobbing, and he’s so _young_ , older than Ben will ever be but still so so _young_ , Ben’s heart is breaking. “Get _away from me_ \- Ben, _Ben_ \- please - tell them to get away - “

The paramedics are holding him down, yelling about milligrams and sedatives. One of them sticks Klaus with something and his entire body slumps into the stretcher again.

“Come on, Klaus,” Ben says, wishes he could hold Klaus’ hand, or stroke his fingers through his hair - _any modicum_ of comfort, anything at all, but he can’t, he can’t because he’s _dead_ and Klaus is alive and he needs Klaus to _stay_ alive - “You gotta make it through this.”

The sedative is taking effect, but Klaus manages to lock eyes with Ben, even as they fight to droop shut. “I’m sorry, Ben - I’m sorry.”

_You should be, for making me watch you do this to yourself, over and over and over -_ “For what, Klaus?”

“I’m sorry you got stuck with me,” Klaus says, sobbing, eyes still fluttering. “I’m sorry - I’m sorry you got stuck with the junkie brother - the useless disappointment of a brother - and no one believes you’re here. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m _sorry_ \- “

“Shh, shh, Klaus it’s ok - worry about getting better first.”

“If Luther - “ Klaus’ eyes are fluttering more now, body slumping even more. “If it were Luther, or Diego, I’m sure they’d believe them - I’m sorry - I’m sorry it’s me.” He takes one, large heaving breath before giving in and closing his eyes. He’s so still it’s only the fact that the heart monitor is still beeping and the paramedics don’t seem more hurried than usual that lets him know Klaus is still alive. “I’m sure you’d be happier with any of our other siblings, Ben. I’m sorry.”

And honestly? Ben finds he can’t contest that, and he hates himself a little for thinking it.

Klaus wakes up the next day in the hospital, immediately charms a nurse into letting him go, eyes twitching at all the ghosts roaming the hospital and fingers twitching from withdrawal symptoms, and never brings up the conversation again.

 

It’s not that Ben doesn’t love his brother, he does - of course he does, he loves all his siblings. But there’s always been a ranking of who he _likes_ the most, and Klaus - poor, broken, junkie, and so so _annoying_ Klaus - has never broken the top three.

What he hadn’t realized was that all the random outbursts, the manic laughter lasting well into the dead of night, and even the drugs (god, especially the drugs) were all ways to hide from the screaming, angry, crying ghosts that follow him around all day every day. He used to get annoyed that Klaus would never pay attention when they needed him to, until he realized that Klaus could barely hear anyone over the cacophony of the spirits in the room, until he realized it was all Klaus could do to even be _present_ in the room with all that - until Ben became a spirit himself.

It hurts to watch his siblings react the same way he used to, and it hurts to know that he _had_ reacted in the same way as him, making Klaus burrow even deeper into himself every time he tried and failed to reach out to his family.

In his defense (and their defense), Klaus is a very, _very_ good actor. And he loved nothing more than running away from himself - anything that might be good for him, or any help they might have even offered him.

Because the truth of the matter is, he didn’t believe he deserved it.

 

“Hey baby, how much you worth?”

Klaus is twenty-two now, and has stuffed himself into tight leather pants and a mesh crop top, leaning against the alley smoking a cigarette. He turns to the voice, salacious smirk pasted on his face. (And Ben is sixteen, he’s still sixteen, he’s always sixteen, and he has a very bad feeling about the guy that the voice belongs to.)

“I’m worth _everything_ , sweetheart,” Klaus says, swinging his hips flirtatiously to face the guy fully and blowing a kiss.

The guy snorts. He’s big, beefy, in a tight leather jacket and army cargo pants. He’s got a glint in his eye Ben doesn’t like, not at all. The guy reaches out and puts a hand on Klaus’ throat, and squeezes gently. Klaus’ eyes flutter closed, playing the part. Alarm bells are already ringing in Ben’s head, but he knows from experience Klaus won’t pay attention to him now.

He tries anyway. “Klaus, please get away from him. Please.”

Apart from a slight twitch of his left hand (his “GOODBYE” hand, he’d gotten tattoos to celebrate their twenty-first birthday - didn’t have money but had sex with the guy for two weeks to compensate him, stole three bags of cocaine from him on his way out the door), he gets no reaction from Klaus.

The guy makes his move when Klaus still hasn’t responded - slams his head back into the concrete of the alley wall, hand still pressing into his brother’s throat. Klaus’ eyes pop open and he laughs, bright and loud and manic and nothing like what his real laugh is like ( _a memory, unbidden - Ben, Klaus, and Vanya, at Griddy’s Donuts when they’re twelve with the rest of their family, Klaus is putting donuts on his face like goggles and everyone’s laughing, and it’s like no one can see the dark circles under Klaus’ eyes or the way he holds himself tighter next to Luther than anyone else, but they’re laughing, they’re all laughing together like real siblings, and that’s what matters - )._

Ben flinches and yells again for Klaus to get away from him, but knows he won’t, not now. Klaus had discovered recently that physical pain had the same numbing effect that popping pills did, if it was bad enough, which is part of why he was out here in this seedy alley in first place - part of why he’d chosen _this_ way to get the money he needed. His body is littered with bruises and scars from all the men who have come before this guy, and it hurts - it hurts Ben so much to just have to watch, to be able to do nothing (he can’t stop it, he can’t stop it, has never been able to stop it) as he watches his brother wasting away his life trying to run away from his power.

(And Ben gets it, it’s not like he doesn’t _get it_ \- but you can only run away from yourself for so long until there’s a statue of you in the courtyard of your childhood home and you’re haunting your own damn funeral.)

“What’s 150 bucks gonna get me, kid?” Cargo Pants asks.

Klaus laughs again, easy and pliant and a little high (but not high enough, never high enough to escape the ghosts, especially in this alleyway), as he leans into the hand choking his throat. “For a 150 bucks, you can make me do anything you want, sweetheart.” He grins, large and wide and flirtatious, and Ben has to look away as Cargo Pants pulls him off the wall, turns him around, slams his brother’s chest into the wall again, and then -

Is arresting him.

“Hey, what the fuck - “ Klaus is saying, eyes floundering open and arms flailing as much as they can, pinned behind his back.

“You’re being arrested for prostitution. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be - “

“ _What the fuck_ ,” Klaus is saying, eyes wildly looking around for - “Ben?” he says, almost brokenly.

And it should make Ben feel better, that even after all that Klaus does to get rid of the ghosts, his first instinct is always to check to make sure Ben is still there.

Cargo Pants pulls him away from the wall after finishing reading him his rights and starts marching him toward the end of the alley by his bicep, and Ben falls into step beside Klaus.

It just makes him feel sad, instead.

“Yeah, Klaus. I’m here.”

Klaus places his voice and turns to him, even as Cargo Pants is shoving him along with what looks to be a bruising hold on his arm, eyes wide and dilated and settling only when he locks eyes with Ben. “Oh, thank God,” Klaus says, swallowing. “I was so worried that I’d - “

_(One time, when Ben was recently dead and Klaus was doing absolutely everything he could do get rid of his ghosts, they were having an argument and Klaus had - pushed - so hard that Ben had been shoved out of that realm completely, had ended up somewhere he didn’t recognize. An entire plane of shapeless beings, of the dead, groaning and echoing around him. He has no idea how long he’d been there before Klaus finally was able to pull him out again, newly sober and crying and panicked. If nothing else, Ben knows it had scared Klaus just as much as it had scared him. If he wasn’t there to look after his dumbass junkie brother, who would? He definitely couldn’t trust Klaus to do the job.)_

Cargo Pants shakes Klaus, making Klaus cringe as the hold on his bicep gets tighter. “Who the fuck are you talking to?”

Ben really, _really_ didn’t like this guy. He reminded Ben too much of Luther, the way he’d use his muscles and size to get anything he wanted, whether it was extra sparring rounds with his siblings or just the last cookie - and Klaus must be reminded too, if his jumpiness and wary eyes are anything to go by. He’s holding himself differently, the way he always does against their eldest brother.

( _Another memory, unbidden - Klaus begging Dad and Luther to stop as they drag him out of the house during his special training days. Dad had called in Number One’s assistance when Klaus proved too difficult to deal with on his own, and Number One, always willing to comply, had accidentally dislocated Number Four’s arm as he worked to do as their father wanted. Klaus is still begging, and it stays in Ben’s nightmares for the next three weeks. When he comes back, he’s hollow in a way Ben’s never seen his brother before - hollow and broken. The next time he’s called for special training, he goes without struggling.)_

“I told you I had a bad feeling about him,” Ben can’t help but mutter.

“Shut up, Ben,” Klaus hisses, then says to the officer, grinning maniacally up at him, “My dead brother’s ghost. Wanna say hi?”

Ben sighs. “You’re never going to make friends if you lead with that.” But he’s smirking, a little. His and Klaus’ senses of humor have always been similar, at least.

Cargo Pants just rolls his eyes, “Fucking crazy ass whores - “ and _oh_ , Ben _really, really_ doesn’t like him.  They get to the end of the alley where a police car is waiting for them.

“You just smashed this _whore’s_ head into a wall a couple of times - does that come with the job description, _Officer_ ?” Klaus grins again, up at Cargo Pants, eyeliner smudged and lips twitching as he stretches the grin out wider. He mock gasps, as if he’s just realized something. “Or was that part just for _you_ , Officer? Is that just the kind of shit you get off to? Kinky but _risque_ , Officer, what with your profession and all - ”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Officer Cargo Pants bites out, opening the door to the back of the police car and shoving Klaus in roughly.

Klaus just laughs.

“You didn’t have to antagonize him,” Ben says, quietly. _Even if he’d deserved it_.

Klaus doesn’t get a chance to answer as Cargo Pants walks around the car and says into his radio, “Officer Bratner to Dispatch - picked up a 3028, taking him into the 55 now.”

“Fuck,” Klaus mutters, paling suddenly.

Ben looks over, confused.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck _fuck_ .” He’s curling into himself, pulling his knees up and resting his bare feet on the seat cushion, and leaning into his thighs. “ _Fuck_ , I can’t face him yet.”

“Klaus?” Ben asks, confused. He doesn’t understand what’s so important about this particular precinct, there are hundreds of them around the city and -

Fuck.

“Diego,” Ben says, softly. “Diego works there now, doesn’t he?”

The car starts, Officer Fuckface having presumably gotten into the driver's seat beyond the divider separating them, and starts rolling down the street.

Klaus looks over at Ben, grinning widely. “Yeah, how _fun_ will this reunion be, right?” He cuts himself off at the look Ben gives him, swallows, and then drops his gaze, doesn’t look Ben in the eye, which is how he knows he’s being given a rare moment of sincerity. “Ben, I can’t let him see me like this, I just - “ He cuts himself off, bites his lip. He sighs, resting his head on his thighs in front of him. The streetlights bathe him in the soft white light as they drive by and he just - he looks so _small_ that Ben’s heart breaks.

“I don’t want him to see me like this.” It’s nothing more than a whisper, a soft, broken plea to save any amount of face at all.

“Maybe he won’t be on duty,” Ben starts, grasping for anything that might help.

“They’ll call him, they always do - because I’m his“ Klaus spits the word, “ _brother_ and they think they’re being kind to him by letting him know.”

“Don’t you think he’d want to know?” _That you’re safe, and that you’re alive?_

“Shut up, Ben - would _you_?” Klaus says nastily. And then, immediately, “Fuck, I’m sorry. That’s not - that’s not fair.”

“Yes,” Ben says, and it’s not his fault if it comes out a little strangled. The car jostles over a bump in the road, and he decides to just be honest. “If I were Diego, I’d want to know. So I could help keep you safe.”

Klaus laughs, and there’s a sharp edge to it. “Diego’s not going to care about that. He’s just - fuck, he’s going to be _so pissed_.”

Diego, unfortunately, but understandably, Ben thinks, proves Klaus right. “What the _fuck_ were you thinking, Klaus?” he screams, slamming Klaus’s (rather thick) police file on the table between them. There are no less than five ghosts in the small interrogation room they’re in, and they passed at least twelve on the way in (Ben’s lost count at this point). Klaus is sobering up by the second, and they couldn’t have chosen better ghosts if they’d actually _wanted_ to torture him with it. “ _Prostitution_ ? Seriously? Now you’re whoring yourself out for cheap thrills? What, gambling and stealing weren’t enough for you anymore? Not giving you the _high_ you needed?”

Klaus flinches, but he’s not even paying attention to Diego at this point, Ben thinks. His stare is on the mutilated body in the corner and the small baby that’s crawling through the gore.

“Don’t look at it, Klaus,” Ben says, just to jostle him into action, but regrets it when Klaus flinches, full body, gaze tearing over to Ben for just a second before settling again on the woman hanging from the ceiling.

“Hey!” Diego yells, snapping his fingers in front of Klaus’ face. Klaus flinches again, and blinks up at Diego’s face. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.” Klaus just stares at him, unseeing and blinking slowly. Diego slams a hand on the table and Klaus _jumps_ , heart racing and face flushed. “Seriously Klaus you could go to _prison_ for this. Could you take this even just a _little_ seriously?”

“Come on, Klaus - just tell him the truth. Let him help you,” Ben urges. _Please, please, please let him help you - because we both know I can’t._ “I know he’s mad, but he’d understand, Klaus, he’d _help you_ if you just _let him in_.”

Ben sees the exact moment Klaus decides it’s not worth it. He unclenches, holds himself more loosely and looks up at Diego with a smirk. “I don’t know,” Klaus says, gamely ignoring the man currently screaming in his ear.  Ben would never, ever admit it, but now that he sees what Klaus sees, he thinks he understands the deep nosedive Klaus took into drugs. (And if he’s honest with himself, when he thinks about the monsters crawling under his skin when he was alive, he thinks he’s understood even longer than that - had _understood_ but never _condoned_.) “I think I’d do pretty well in prison myself, if we’re being honest.” He puts his chin in his hands and grins up, fluttering his eyelashes flirtily. “I’m pretty enough, don’t you think?”

Diego pushes back with a grunt of disgust and pinches the bridge of his nose with his eyes squeezed shut. He’s quiet for a long second, and Ben can see the exact moment Diego gives up on his little brother. ( _No, no, no please, please - he’s just being annoying because he thinks you don’t care enough to see past that to see that he’s really, really hurt - he needs_ help _Diego please don’t fall for his act - )_

“I’m going to get them to send you to rehab instead of prison, Klaus. Maybe this time by some miracle it’ll stick.” Diego starts walking toward the door. “But this is the last time I’m sticking my neck out for you - next time it _will_ be prison, Klaus, so _try_ and get your shit together, okay?”

Klaus waves a hand, still handcuffed to the table. “Yeah, yeah.” He perks up. “Oh, but damn, guess I’ll miss the wedding, huh?”

Diego had opened the door, was about to step out of the room when he pauses. He doesn’t speak for a long time, jaw working like he wants to but doesn’t know what to say. It’s a quirk Ben remembers from their childhood, Diego making sure he had all his words lined up before opening his mouth.

Klaus looks over at Ben, who tries his best to look encouraging. Klaus just makes a face back at him, but eventually sighs and says, “I was trying to pay you back for the ring I stole.”

Diego starts at this. “And you thought -” he hisses, turning back to face Klaus and closing the door again before cutting himself off. He squeezes his eyes shut and cracks his knuckles slowly, another tick Ben remembers from their childhood, this one a calming one. “Klaus, let me be very clear,” Diego says, finally. “I will not take any money from my _brother_ that he made while _whoring himself out for drugs_.”

Ben can’t say he doesn’t understand. It was one thing when Diego didn’t have to know how Klaus had gotten the money, but now -

Klaus swallows. “Would have taken a while but - I was - I was - trying.” His eyes flicker over to the ghosts in the corner again, and to Ben. “Doesn’t that count for something?” he asks, in the smallest voice Ben’s ever heard him use.

Diego walks back over to the door, opens it, and stays there for a long second before he says, “Eudora and I broke up three months ago, Klaus. I don’t need the ring anymore.” He looks back at Klaus. “And you can’t think you would have been invited to the wedding, anyway.”

Later (much later, after rehab and relapse and rehab again), Ben watches Klaus slide the envelope of money under Diego’s door. There’s a note on it: _Don’t worry, got this all legally_ \- and he had, even if only because Ben kept pestering him and shaming him until he finally had the full amount to give back to Diego. (Klaus had wanted to give up millions of times, so easily, and that’s always been his problem.)

He doesn’t think he’s imagining the moistness in Klaus’ eyes when he walks away, and if Ben could cry at all anymore, he thinks he would be too.

 

Sometimes, Ben thinks, it’s not even the ghosts he’s trying to escape as much as it is himself. It’s clear to anyone and everyone, but especially Ben, that Klaus just - doesn’t _like_ himself. It’s clear in the way that Klaus gives all of himself to people so that they can never prod beneath his own surface, the way that he never lets anyone see the vulnerable side of him, the way that he pushes people away before they can see the facade he’s crafted for them crumble away.

He does this the most with their siblings - he portrays himself in only the ways that he wants to be seen, and in the way that _they_ want him to be seen, so they can’t have any other expectations for him.

With Luther, he’ll always be the annoying younger child that constantly needs all the attention on him (though the thing that Klaus had always craved wasn’t attention at all, wasn’t something so easily given), with Allison he’s the sibling she can chat about clothes and makeup with because Vanya was never going to be that for her (which was yet another role he was putting on, albeit one he enjoyed putting on), Diego’s always been closer to Klaus than the rest of their siblings, no one really knows Vanya all that well, and with Ben - well, Ben knows that a huge part of why Klaus liked him so much as kids was because at least around him, Klaus wasn’t the one with the worst power.

And Ben had always kind of felt the same.

 

Everything changes right after the terrifying 10 hours that Ben _loses_ Klaus and he reappears on a bus with blood on his hands and a haunted look in his eyes that hadn’t been there before Ben had _lost_ him.

“Klaus,” Ben says softly when Klaus’ sobs in the middle of the street have quieted to soft sniffles and whimpers. He has no idea what had happened to him, what Klaus has been through these last 10 hours - just that he couldn’t _reach_ Klaus, no matter how hard he’d tried, and he’d been terrified that he’d finally actually lost him. “Klaus, please. You have to get back to the house. The others - they can help. They need to know you’re alright.”

Klaus doesn’t say anything - doesn’t deflect, doesn’t contradict, doesn’t brush him off - and that’s even scarier. This is a Klaus Ben doesn’t understand, doesn’t know.

“Klaus? Klaus, please,” Ben whispers. He’s scared - he’s so scared. He’s always been pretty good at knowing when Klaus needs comfort or when he needs someone to light a fire under his ass, to push and needle him into doing something, but for the first time in decades, he has no idea how to help, no idea what to do. He feels lost, adrift.

Klaus eventually gets up off the ground, robotic, like he doesn’t know where he is anymore, and starts walking back toward the house. He’s flinching at every loud noise and shying away from each absent minded brush from strangers on the street, and he doesn’t talk about it until he’s made it home (in one piece, thank god) and is in the bath.

“Klaus,” Ben whispers again, sitting next to the tub as his brother is hunched over the faucets and breathing heavily, coming back from a panic attack Ben can’t understand. “Talk to me.”

“He loved me,” Klaus says, voice shaking, and Ben doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but this isn’t it. “He loved me and it got him killed.”

Ben doesn’t say anything - Ben may not understand this new Klaus, but this feels like one of those moments that Klaus needs silence and not comfort.

“He _loved_ me, Ben,” he says again, and his voice has never sounded so broken. He’s crying again. “Can you - can you believe that?” he asks, voice wet with tears. “He loved me. I never - I never thought that could happen to me, not to all of me. I’m - I’m well, _me_ .” Klaus laughs, and it’s broken and wet. “But _Dave_ \- Dave loved me _so much_ .” A wet hiccup. “He loved all of me and I _loved_ him. And now he’s gone.” He shudders from the cold and the previous panic attack and a hundred other emotions Ben will never understand. “He’s gone,” he chokes out.

Ben doesn’t say anything - _can’t_ say anything. For the first time, he’s out of words. He doesn’t want to say the wrong thing, make things worse than they are. He’s never seen Klaus like this - not during Hazel and Cha Cha’s torture, not during any of the missions their father had put them through, not even after Ben’s own death. Whatever Klaus had been through in the last 10 hours, whoever this Dave was, it had broken Klaus down to his very core.

Klaus takes his silence the wrong way, though. He looks up and gives Ben a watery smile. “I know it’s hard to believe - that anyone could love me.”

Ben lets out a pained noise. “It’s not,” he stumbles to say, and it comes out wrong, comes out like he’s just saying it to be placating, rather than it being the one undying truth of their entire relationship. Klaus is not an easy person to like, but he’s a very easy person to love.

Klaus doesn’t say anything, just snorts, hunched over the water again.

“Klaus,” Ben says again. “It’s not.”

Klaus gives him another watery smile. “Figures though, right? I meet the love of my life in a war zone 50 years ago, follow him all the way to the front lines - we were -” he breaks off, tearing up again. “God, we were going to get a farm - we’d really - I really thought we were going to make it out of there intact.”

Something under Ben’s skin is itching, and for once it’s not the monsters. “You were - you were going to stay there?” Ben still doesn’t really understand where _there_ is, or what happened, but - Klaus was going to _stay_ there, in that space where Ben couldn’t reach him and he would have been _completely alone here_.

It takes Klaus a couple of seconds to piece it together. His eyes go wide and he starts, “Ben, I - “ but can’t seem to finish.

And Ben knows he shouldn’t be selfish, knows he shouldn’t want this, knows that he’s gotten a better deal than most dead people with Klaus as his brother, but still - still, it fucking hurts.

“I - I loved him, Ben,” Klaus says, in a small voice. “I’m sorry - I loved him.”

Ben can’t stay here anymore - ducks out of the bathroom and wanders the house, walks around his old room, reads a book, anything to get his mind off of the way that Klaus had said _I loved him_ like what he meant to say was _I don’t love you_.

Ben apologizes later and Klaus apologizes later, but it’s still clear that their relationship has shifted, has fissured, has cracked - but, Ben realizes, hadn’t shattered.

 

Of course, that all changes when they go back in time to help stop the apocalypse.  

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> writing this was...an adventure. i just love klaus so much i got a little carried away. this gets less and less edited & coherent the further it goes along, but i really just needed to finish it & post it so here it is. i have a lot more thoughts on all of this, and other points in time i wanted to write out (the first time ben hears about the mausoleum, klaus & ben's feelings on vanya's book, dave's reactions to klaus' deflections, etc) so i may add more chapters later, but tell me what you think!
> 
> say hi on tumblr (toomuchsky)!


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